The present invention relates to a recording media, an information processing apparatus, a control method and a program and, more particularly, to a recording media, an information processing apparatus, a control method and a program invented with the purpose of reducing power consumption.
With the development of networks in recent years, information processing apparatuses have come into use in connections to various networks. Devices constituting networks vary in performance depending on the networks. For example, recent network devices can perform communication at 1 Gbps at the maximum. On the other hand, network devices which can perform communication at 10 Mbps at the maximum are still being widely used. In conventional information processing apparatuses, therefore, an automatic negotiation function is used to set the maximum communication rate in each information processing apparatus at which communication can be performed between the information processing apparatus and a network device to which the information processing apparatus is connected. A technique of reducing the data transmission rate when there is no data to be transmitted is also being used (see patent document 1).
[Patent document 1] Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 2000-101580
In most cases, however, the information processing apparatus performs communication at a rate lower than the maximum communication rate in a set communication mode. Also, a communication device provided in the information processing apparatus consumes higher power in a communication mode of a higher maximum communication rate. In many cases, therefore, the information processing apparatus wastefully consumes power when set in a communication mode of an unnecessarily high communication rate. Further, in a communication mode of a high maximum communication rate, there is a possibility of the temperature of the body of the information processing device being excessively increased by heat produced by the communication device. In such a case, the information processing apparatus has the disadvantage of causing user discomfort for example.
Furthermore, according to the technique of the Patent Document 1, radio communication apparatus such as a mobile phone can control the data transmission rate for communicating with a basic station in accordance with the presence/absence of the data to be transmitted. For a versatile information processing apparatus such as a personal computer, however, since various application programs communicate at an arbitrary timing, it is difficult to calculate the amount of the data to be transmitted before the start of communication.
An object of the present invention is to provide a recording media, an information processing apparatus, a control method and a program capable of solving the above-described problems. This object can be attained by a combination of features described in the independent claims in the appended claims.